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McGinn signs letter vetoing aggressive panhandling law

It’s an interesting headline, but, as City Councilman Bruce Harrell pointed out at the mayor’s veto ceremony today at City Hall, it does not mean that the four council members who voted against Tim Burgess’s aggressive solicitation ordinance are for street bullying.

To the contrary: Harrell, one of the four council members who voted against the measure, said today that he wants to see an honest debate on the issue in the future. But that’s not what Seattle got, he said, from Burgess’s proposal, which would have allowed police to give people asking for money on the street a $50 ticket if they exhibited intimidating behavior — a law that the Seattle Human Rights Commission said would deprive the poor of due process.

“I continue to believe the debate was a dishonest debate,” Harrell told a room of about 100 homeless and civil rights advocates at City Hall. Council members who voted no are just as interested in public safety as those who supported the measure, he said, but proponents’ argument that Seattle’s current law against aggressive panhandling was insufficient just didn’t wash.

“This was a bad law,” Harrell said — one that isn’t quite yet dead yet, the Rev. David Bloom said. Sometime in the next 30 days, the council will take a final vote in which it could override the mayor’s veto if any of the opponents change their vote. A last-minute change of heart by Councilman Mike O’Brien, who did not attend the veto ceremony, is how Monday’s council vote came out 5-4, a split that lacks the two-thirds majority needed to countermand the mayor.

“We need to continue to support those [four] councilmembers, because they are under tremendous pressure” to change their vote, Bloom said. “All it would take, folks, is one vote.”

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..